Herodian's Roman
History

Herodian
(late second, first half third century): Greek historian, author of a History
of the Roman Empire since the Death of Marcus Aurelius (table
of contents) in which he describes the reign of
Commodus (180-192), the Year of the Five Emperors (193), the age of the
Severan dynasty (211-235),
and the Year of the Six Emperors (238).

The translation was made by Edward C. Echols (Herodian of Antioch's History of
the Roman Empire, 1961 Berkeley and Los Angeles) and was
put online for the
first time by Roger Pearse (Tertullian.Org).
The version offered on these pages is hyperlinked and contains notes by
Jona Lendering.

2.15: Clodius Albinus recognized as caesar

[Summer 193]Severus
made preparations for the war with great
care. A thorough and cautious man, he had his doubts about the army in
Britain, which was large and very powerful, manned by
excellent soldiers. Britain was then under the command of Albinus, a
man of the senatorial order who had been reared in luxury on money
inherited from his ancestors.

Severus, wishing to
gain the friendship of this man, deceived him by a trick; he feared
that Albinus, having strong stimuli to encourage him to seize the
throne, and made bold by his ancestry and wealth, a powerful army, and
his popularity among the Romans, might seize the empire and occupy Rome
while Severus was busy with affairs in the East.

And so he deceived
the man by pretending to do him honor. Albinus, conceited and somewhat
naive in his judgment, really believed the many things which Severus
swore on oath in his letters. Severus appointed him caesar, to
anticipate his hope and desire for a share of the imperial power.

He wrote Albinus the
friendliest of letters, deceitful, of course, in which he begged the
man to devote his attention to the welfare of the empire. He wrote him
that the situation required a man of the nobility in the prime of life;
he himself was old and afflicted with gout, and his sons were still
very young. Believing Severus, Albinus gratefully accepted the honor,
delighted to be getting what he wanted without fighting and without
risk.

After making these
same proposals to the Senate, to increase their faith in him, Severus
ordered coins to be struck bearing his likeness, and he increased the
favor he had won by erecting statues of himself and assuming the rest
of the imperial honors. When he had, by his cunning, arranged matters
securely with respect to Albinus and consequently had nothing to fear
from Britain, the emperor, accompanied by the entire army of Illyricum,
set out against Niger, convinced that he had arranged to his own
advantage everything affecting his reign.

Where he halted on
his march, what he said in each city, the portents that seemed to
appear by divine foresight, the countries and conflicts, the number of
men on each side who fell in battle, all
these have been recorded fully enough by numerous historians and poets
who have made the
life of Severus the subject of their entire work. But it is my intent
to write a chronological account of the exploits of many emperors over
a period of seventy years, exploits about which I have knowledge from
personal experience. Therefore I shall record the most significant and
distinguished of Severus' achievements in the order in which they
occurred, not selecting the favorable ones in order to flatter him, as
did the writers of his own day; but, on the other hand, I shall omit
nothing worth telling or worth remembering.